.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
We are grateful to Professor Nicola Spinosa for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph. He will publish the picture in the forthcoming second edition of his monograph on Ribera's oeuvre.
Ribera also treated this subject in a picture now in the Museo Civico 'Gaetano Filangeri' (N. Spinosa, Ribera, Naples, 2003, p. 335, no. A278 and illustrated on p. 203), of which replicas and variants exist. Although of broadly similar composition, in that picture, which is dated 1646, the artist has included a bloodied cloth and knife. The present work is quite different in execution: the relative freedom of its handling, the way in which artist has tilted the head slightly upwards and depicted the Baptist's mouth just open suggesting a more recent death, combine to lend the image an even greater and more shocking immediacy than its counterpart.
Ribera also treated this subject in a picture now in the Museo Civico 'Gaetano Filangeri' (N. Spinosa, Ribera, Naples, 2003, p. 335, no. A278 and illustrated on p. 203), of which replicas and variants exist. Although of broadly similar composition, in that picture, which is dated 1646, the artist has included a bloodied cloth and knife. The present work is quite different in execution: the relative freedom of its handling, the way in which artist has tilted the head slightly upwards and depicted the Baptist's mouth just open suggesting a more recent death, combine to lend the image an even greater and more shocking immediacy than its counterpart.